The Vajpayee cabinet: All old timers minus one

Following are brief profiles of the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues:

Atal Bihari Vajpayee:

Atal Bihari Vajpayee begins his third stint
as prime minister on terra firma unlike on the previous two
occasions.

The first government the poet-politician headed after the 1996
Lok Sabha elections lasted barely 13 days and the second one in 1998
just 13 months. Some may consider 13 as a bad omen. Vajpayee does
not. He chose this day today to be sworn in as the head of the
National Democratic Alliance government.

Vajpayee, a man of consensus who over the years has become a
Gandhian socialist and represents the moderate face of Hindutva, is
faced with the problem of keeping under check an ever-burgeoning
fiscal deficit, accentuated by the Kargil conflict.

The 75-year-old bachelor has said that he is willing to take hard
decisions but would like to take all sections of society along in
the task of nation building.

Vajpayee virtually disapproved of his senior party colleague L
K Advani's controversial rath yatra in 1990 and minced no words in
Parliament in criticising the December 1992 demolition of the Babri
mosque.

His desire to keep contentious issues on the backburner came out
clear and loud in his reply in the Lok Sabha on May 28, 1996 to the
debate on his confidence motion (which, however, was not put to vote
because he announced before hand itself that he was proceeding to the
Rashtrapati Bhavan to submit his government's resignation).

Vajpayee had said then that his party was ready to ''freeze''
its stand on the divisive issues of construction of the Ram temple
in Ayodhya, abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution and
implementation of a uniform civil code in the interest of evolving a
''national consensus''.

Vajpayee was born in Gwalior on Christmas day (December 25),
1924. His father, Pandit Krishna Bihari Vajpayee was a school
teacher and his grand father, Pandit Shyam Lal, a renowned Sanskrit
scholar.

He had his education in Gwalior doing his Bachelor of Arts degree from
Victoria College (now Lakshmibai College). Later, he went on to
acquire a masters degree in political science from DAV College in
Kanpur.

Then, he enrolled himself for a law degree, but did not complete
the course. His father, who had just retired from service, got an
admission in the law college along with his son. They were in the same
hostel room and same class.

Vajpayee was attracted to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
at an early age and became an active member of the Arya Kumar
Sabha.

In 1941, he joined the Indian National Congress and was jailed
during the 1942 Quit India movement. His detractors have alleged
that he had obtained his release from prison by tendering an apology.

In 1946, he was sent by the RSS to Sandila as a pracharak.
After a few months, he was appointed as the first editor of the
newspaper Rashtra Dharma in Lucknow. Later, when the RSS started
its new organ, Panchajanya, Vajpayee moved over as its editor.

In subsequent years, he edited the weekly Chetna from Varanasi,
Dainik Swadesh from Lucknow and Veer Arjun from Delhi.

Vajpayee had attracted the attention of leaders like Shyama Prasad
Mukherjee and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya by his ability, intellectual
prowess and speaking talent.

He was among the founder members of the Jan Sangh. He served as
the private secretary to Dr Mukherjee.

Vajpayee had his first foray into electoral politics in 1955 when
he contested the by-election for the Lucknow Lok Sabha seat vacated
by Vijayalakshmi Pandit. He lost.

He entered Parliament first in 1957, winning the Balrampur Lok
Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh. He lost the seat to Subhadra Joshi of
the Congress in 1962 but recaptured it in 1967. He won from Gwalior
in 1971, New Delhi in 1977 and 1980 and Lucknow in 1991, 1996 and
1998.

He was member of the Rajya Sabha twice -- 1962-67 and 1986-89.

Vajpayee was the leader of the Jan Sangh Parliamentary Party from
1957 to 1977, president of the Jan Sangh from 1968-73 and founder
president of the BJP created following the
break-up of the Janata Party which had stormed to power on the
anti-Emergency wave in 1977.

He was arrested during the Emergency along with Jayaprakash Narain
and a large number of other opposition leaders. He remained in
detention from 1975 to 1977. When the then prime minister Indira
Gandhi announced the Lok Sabha elections in 1977 and lifted the
Emergency, he played a key role in ensuring the merger of the Jan
Sangh with the Janata Party.

Vajpayee held the external affairs portfolio in the Morarji Desai
government. It was as the external affairs minister that he, belying
the ''expectations'' from the member of a ''communal and
reactionary'' outfit, took initiatives to improve relations with the
neighbours, especially Pakistan.

He also created history by addressing the United Nations
General Assembly in Hindi. Participating in the general debate, he
drew the attention of the member-states to global economic issues,
the need for a North-South dialogue, disarmament, West Asia and
apartheid.

Vajpayee is well-known for his felicity with the spoken word,
especially in Hindi. It is often said that his prose sounds like
poetry.

He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 1992 in recognition of
his services to the nation and the Gobind Ballabh Pant Award for best
parliamentarian and the Lok Manya Tilak Puraskar (both in 1994).

Vajpayee has served on a number of important committees of
Parliament. He was chairman, Committee on Government Assurances
(1966-67), chairman, Public Accounts Committee (1967-70) member,
General Purposes Committee (1986) and chairman, Standing Committee
on External Affairs (1993-96).

He has also been a member of the National Integration Council
from 1961.

L K Advani:

From a firebrand rathyatri in 1989 to the
present-day elder statesman, Lal Krishna Advani has come a long
way.

The eventful decade that began with the rath yatra to highlight the
Hindutva agenda of building the Ram temple at Ayodhya, saw him steering the BJP from the fringes of national politics onto centrestage.

With great political acumen he has managed to avoid any impression of differences cropping up with a more moderate Vajpayee on several important national issues during his tenure as the home minister in the previous 13-month-old ministry.

In 1998, he had the onerous responsibility as the party
president to bring the BJP to power by entering, for the first time,
into regional pre-poll alliances.

Advani, who took over from Vajpayee as party president in
1986, had a two-term tenure till 1990. After an interregnum
between 1990 to 1993 when Dr Murli Manohar Joshi took over, he
assumed the leadership once again. He handed over the reins of the party
to Khushabhau Thakre in May last year.

It was Advani who put the BJP on the Hindutva track after his
predecessor tried for years to shed the Jan Sangh legacy to project
BJP as a centerist alternative.

Born in Karachi on November 8, 1927, Advani had his schooling
at St Patricks and later at D G National College, Hyderabad, Sind.
Later, he sought admission in the NED Engineering College, Karachi
but did not join the course. After Partition, he did his LLB at
Bombay University.

He had not joined the engineering college mainly because he
became involved in the work of the RSS. At the time of Partition, he was the secretary of the
Karachi branch of the RSS.

After Partition, he came to Rajashtan to work as a RSS
pracharak. In 1951, when the Jan Sangh was formed he joined it
and was the unit secretary from 1952 to 1957.

In 1958, he shifted to Delhi and functioned as the unit
secretary of the Jan Sangh there till 1963. It was during this time that
Advani also worked as the secretary of the party's parliamentary
group which was headed by Vajpayee. He joined the weekly
Organiser as joint editor in 1960 and went on to assume the
leadership of the Jan Sangh in the Rajya Sabha.

Yashwant Sinha:

Bureaucrat-turned-politician Yashwant Sinha
may have lacked the flamboyance of his predecessors in the finance
ministry -- P Chidambaram and Dr Manmohan Singh -- but he did a good job carrying the nation
forward along the course set by them.

Now, he gets a second chance to push through what he has labelled ''the second
generation of reforms'' besides coping with a burgeoning deficit and
other problems which would necessarily call for some hard decisions.

He is considered a liberal in the BJP. Influenced by Jayaprakash Narayan's
socialist movement of the mid-seventies, Sinha took to active politics and joined
the Janata Dal in 1984 after resigning his post of joint secretary
in the ministry of shipping and transport.

He was elected to the Rajya Sabha for the first time in
1988 and rose to prominence as a spokesman of the JD during
the 1989 Lok Sabha elections. He made news when he walked out of the
swearing-in ceremony, in a fit of pique, on being named a minister
of state by V P Singh. He later became the finance minister in the Chandra Shekhar
government.

Born in 1937 in Patna, Sinha joined the Indian Administrative
Service in 1960 after a two-year stint as a lecturer in
political science at Patna University, where he had studied. His
first posting was at Santhal Parganas in South Bihar.

It was his meetings with Jayaprakash Narayan in the late 1960s
and his tenures as principal secretary to two chief ministers of
Bihar -- Karpoori Thakur of the Lok Dal and the Janata Party's Ram Sundar
Dass -- that attracted him to politics.

Jaswant Singh:

The suave aristocrat Jaswant Singh was able
to prove his mettle in the aftermath of the Kargil crisis when as
the external affairs minister, he skilfully presented and convinced
the United States about India's position.

Termed as a man for all seasons, he can prove invaluable to the new government for
setting things right, for soothing tempers, be it of countries or leaders.

Even before becoming the external affairs minister, Jaswant
Singh was the negotiator on behalf of the Indian government during
talks with the US on security related issues after the
nuclear explosions in Pokhran in May 1998.

His talks with US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott
centred primarily around ''India's nuclear status'' and New Delhi's
stand on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Academically, he has been specialising in security matters for a
long time and is considered an expert on defence matters.
His previous stints in government include the post of finance
minister in the 13-day government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1996
and as deputy chairman of the planning commission.

A former cavalry officer, Jaswant Singh left the
army for the more exciting game of politics. He has been thrice
elected to the Rajya Sabha, the first time in 1980 and has come to
the Lok Sabha for the fourth time.

Born at Jasoi in Barmer district of Rajasthan in 1938, Singh
was educated at the Mayo College, Ajmer before joining the National
Defence Academy at Khadakvasla. Although he left the army, he has
retained his interest in defence. He has been an active member of the
Defence Services Institute, the Institute of Defence and Strategic
Studies and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in
London.

George Fernandes:

After a stormy, controversial tenure as the
defence minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee cabinet, the
indefatigable George Fernandes gets yet another stint at the helm of
affairs more so because of his political skills.

The minister's comments against China, the sacking
of naval chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, the Kargil episode and its
resulting controversies shadowed him throughout his tenure.

The nuclear tests at Pokhran, the testing of Agni-2, visits to
forward areas, including the Siachen Glacier, and his sprucing up
the bureaucratic setup within his ministry went to his credit.
More importantly, Fernandes, as a representative of the non-BJP
section of the coalition, provided a larger political space to the
Vajpayee government and became its troubleshooter on several
occasions.

A flamboyant iconoclast, trade unionist and Lohiaite socialist,
the 69-year-old leader is coming into the central
cabinet for the fourth time after making his debut as the
communications and industry minister in 1977. He was the railways minister in
1989.

After training to become a priest, Fernandes moved to Bombay
in 1950 and came into contact with veteran union leader D'Mello and
then Ram Manohar Lohia, the ''greatest influence'' of his life.

Soon he began organising workers in various sectors and the
highpoint of his trade union career came when he led the all India
railway strike of 1974. When he was industry minister in the Janata
regime of 1977, he banished Coca Cola from India.

Fernandes went underground during the Emergency and was
nabbed in 1977 and tried in the famous Baroda dynamite case. After
Emergency was lifted, he won the Muzaffarpur seat in Bihar by an
over 300,000 vote margin despite his not even visiting the constituency.

He retained the seat in 1980, lost it four years later and
regained it in 1989. His opposition to Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar
led him to a strategic alliance with the BJP in the 1998 elections.
During the last two elections he has been winning from the Nalanda
seat in Bihar.

Jagmohan:

Despite several claimants to ministerial
berths from the capital and his controversial stint in the
communications ministry, Jagmohan once again finds a place in the
A B Vajpayee government mainly for his administrative
skills.

In the midst of the Lok Sabha elections, Jagmohan was shifted from
the communications ministry and given the urban development
portfolio apparently due to his opposition to the revenue-sharing
telecom package for private operators.

But generating controversies is almost second nature to Jagmohan.
As governor of Jammu and Kashmir twice during the Rajiv Gandhi
and V P Singh regimes, Jagmohan evoked both admiration and
criticism for his tough handling of militancy. He still prides in
making the Vaishnodevi temple a major pilgrim centre with all
facilities.

He is also famous for getting Delhi equipped for the 1982 Asian
Games when he was its Lieutenant Governor and Indira Gandhi was the prime
minister. During the Emergency, he launched a demolition drive against
unauthorised structures, including slum colonies, as part of Sanjay
Gandhi's Delhi beautification project.

Jagmohan also had a brief stint as Lt Governor of Goa, Diu and
Dama

Murli Manohar Joshi:

Despite a controversy-ridden 13-month tenure
as human resource development minister during which he came
under fire for ''saffronising education'', Dr Murli Manohar
Joshi is likely to retain his favourite portfolio in the Vajpayee
cabinet.

A key figure in moulding the BJP's
ideologies, programmes and policies, the 65-year-old professor of
physics has become an inevitable member of any BJP cabinet for his
political sagacity and insight.

Born on January 5, 1934 in Delhi, Dr Joshi has his
roots in Almora, Uttar Pradesh. After studying in Delhi, Bijnor,
Almora and Chandpur, he graduated from Meerut College and earned an
M A degree from Allahabad University.

He later accepted a teaching assignment in his alma mater armed
with a doctorate in spectroscopy and over 100 research papers. An
''organisational man,'' he had been leader of the youth wing of the
erstwhile Bharatiya Jan Sangh and held positions in teachers'
associations.

Jailed during the Emergency, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from
Almora and served as general secretary of the Janata Party's
parliamentary wing. He became treasurer of the BJP in 1986 and was
later appointed general secretary in charge of Bihar, Bengal and the
northeastern states.

Dr Joshi, who took over the party reins from Lal Krishna Advani
after the rath yatra, held the home portfolio during the 13-day
tenure of the first BJP government.

Ananth Kumar:

Ananth Kumar, who is having his second
stint as a cabinet minister in the Vajpayee government, is credited
with giving a new direction to civil aviation during his earlier
term by launching the privatisation and corporatisation process of
the sector to make it internationally competitive.

The 40-year-old member of Parliament from Bangalore, a
heavyweight in Karnataka BJP politics, says he has set a record of
sorts by making operational the largest number of pending projects
and launching new ones in the previous government.

Ananth Kumar, who created some controversy with regard to
the moves to acquire the ATR-42 aircraft for Indian Airlines, drew
accolades for his successful handling of the strike by air traffic
controllers last year.

Elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1996, Ananth
Kumar entered politics after participating in the JP movement
against the Emergency in 1975-77. He was secretary of the Akila Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad -- the BJP's student wing -- Karnataka from 1982 to '85.

He was general secretary of the BJP, Karnataka from 1988 to 1995
and national secretary from then onwards.

After his first win from Bangalore South, Ananth Kumar
was a member of the standing committee on industry and the
consultative committee of the ministry of railways.

Fluent in Kannada, Telegu, Hindi and English, he is a good public
speaker and also has some scientific accomplishments to his credit.

Pramod Mahajan:

Pramod Mahajan, despite his propensity to
hog the headlines through controversial remarks, once again finds a
berth in Vajpayee's new cabinet.

The ambitious go-getter from Bombay has always
remained at the centre of action. Even after suffering a shock
defeat in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, he sprang back and became
the prime minister's political advisor with cabinet status. A few
months later he became a member of the Rajya Sabha and was given the
information and broadcasting portfolio.

Mahajan became the first minister to be designated as the
official spokesman to brief the media on cabinet meetings. He stirred
a hornet's nest by announcing that the Prasar Bharati (the Broadcasting
Corporation of India) was not relevant when so many other channels
are available and he would like to wind it up.

He plunged into politics in 1974 after completing his studies and
doing a short stint in journalism. He joined the Jan Sangh and was
with the Janata Party in 1977 when the Jan Sangh merged with it. He
was jailed during the Emergency. When the BJP was
formed, he joined it and rose rapidly to become the all India
secretary in 1983 and was inducted as general secretary ten years
later when L K Advani was the party president.

In 1995, when he was in charge of Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena-BJP
alliance won the assembly elections where his managerial skills were
tested and proven.

He held the defence portfolio in the 13-day Vajpayee government
in 1996.

Ram Naik:

Ram Naik is the only member of the
previous Vajpayee ministry who has been elevated to the cabinet rank.

A seasoned parliamentarian, Naik held independent charge of
the ministry of railways as a minister of state after Nitish
Kumar resigned following the Gaisal accident.

He also handled home affairs and planning and programme
implementation besides parliamentary affairs up to April last.

Naik, who represents north Bombay in the Lok Sabha, won for
the fifth consecutive term in this election. He was also an MLA for
three successive terms earlier.

The chief whip of the BJP in the last three Lok Sabhas, he was
chairman of the public accounts committee in 1995-96 besides working
in the joint parliamentary committee on the security scam.

A member of the BJP's national executive, he was also president
of the party's Bombay unit for four terms.

Naik, who struggled with cancer which struck him in 1994, is a
graduate in commerce and law. He began as an upper division clerk in
the Maharashtra accountant general's office and also worked as a
company secretary and management consultant before joining as a
full time organising secretary of the erstwhile Bharatiya Jana Sangh.

Sharad Yadav:

For giant-killer Sharad Yadav, who
vanquished former Bihar chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav at
Madhepura, this is the second stint in the Union cabinet, having
served as a minister in the V P Singh government.

Born on October 1, 1947 in a farmers' family of modest means at
Akhmau village in Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh, he is an
electronics engineering graduate from Jabalpur.

Inspired by the philosophy of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, he
participated in many mass movements. In 1974, he successfully
contested a Lok Sabha by-election from Jabalpur as a joint opposition
candidate. The very next year he quit the seat protesting against
the ''dictatorial'' attitude of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He was
arrested during the Emergency.

Yadav was re-elected in 1977. He became the national president
of the Yuva Janata in 1980. After the split in the Janata Party in
1979, he became the national general secretary of the Lok Dal led by
Choudhary Charan Singh.

He had played an active role in the formation of the Janata Dal
in 1987-88. In the V P Singh government, he held the portfolio of
textiles and food processing industries.

He was in the forefront of efforts to implement the Mandal
Commission recommendations. He was elected from the Madhepura Lok Sabha constituency for
the first time in 1991.

Yadav became working president of the Janata Dal in 1995 and
was re-elected from Madhepura in 1996. He was elected Janata Dal
president on July 6, 1997 defeating Laloo Prasad Yadav.

He allied with the BJP-led NDA
after the Samata Party and Rama Krishna Hegde's Lok Shakti
decided to merge with the Janata Dal. Subsequently, the Dal split
when a section led by Deve Gowda protested against the alliance.
Yadav is currently president of the Janata Dal-United.

Naveen Patnaik:

Naveen Patnaik, who joined active politics
after the death of his illustrious father Biju Patnaik, has proved
his mettle by not only keeping his Biju Janata Dal party intact but
also maintaining his popularity with the voters to begin a second
stint in the Vajpayee government.

An alumnus of the Doon School, Patnaik had entered the portals
of Parliament for the first time, when he won a by-election from Aska
to the eleventh Lok Sabha.

In the run-up to the 1998 general elections, he had parted ways
with the JD and formed the BJD. At that time, in alliance
with the BJP, he bagged 16 of the 21 Lok Sabha
seats in Orissa.

That victory earned him a berth in the Union cabinet as steel and
mines minister. Earlier, he was a member of the consultative
committee of the ministry of steel and mines, the standing committee on
commerce and the library committee of Parliament.

This time round, the alliance improved the position winning 19
seats. During the course of the past one year, Patnaik had also
survived dissidence in the state unit of the party on the leadership
issue.

Apart from his political skills, he is also an author having
written three books dealing with Indian culture, history and
the environment

Patnaik is a founder-member of the Indian Trust for Art and
Cultural Heritage. He has done pioneering work in Indian
design, bringing it international recognition. He has also made a
significant contribution to help handloom weavers enlarge home
markets for Indian textiles.

T R Balu:

T R Balu, an industrialist, was Union
minister of state for petroleum and natural gas in the United Front
ministry.

Balu, 57, has been elected to the Lok Sabha for the third time.

He was Madras district secretary of the DMK and was active
in the party's youth wing also.

A graduate, Balu was born at Thalikottai village near
Mannargudi. He is married and has a son and two daughters.

Murasoli Maran:

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam ideologue and strategist Murasoli Maran, a
nephew of party president and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M
Karunanidhi, had served as cabinet minister under three prime
ministers -- V P Singh, H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral.

A champion of economic liberalisation under the Gowda and the Gujral
governments, Maran is credited with being the catalyst for foreign investments
in India. However, he bitterly opposed Suzuki's control over Maruti
Udyog Limited.

An astute parliamentarian, Maran was first elected to the Lok
Sabha in 1967. Since then he has been a member of either of the two
houses of Parliament.

He was re-elected to the Lok Sabha in 1996, '98 and '99.

He was imprisoned during the Emergency.
He edited the DMK mouthpiece Murasoli for sometime.

Born to Shanmuga Sundaram at Thirukkuvalai in Thiruvaroor
district in 1934, Maran is a post-graduate. He is married to
Mallika and has two sons and a daughter.

Mamata Banerjee

If popularity and personal charisma are any
yardstick for politicians, then the Trinamool Congress
chief Mamata Baneerjee, who was sworn in as a cabinet minister
today, has plenty of it.

Banerjee had contested the Lok Sabha polls for the sixth time.
She was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1984 when
she defeated CPI-M stalwart Somnath Chatterjee from Jadavpur
constituency. She lost the Jadavpur seat to Malini Bhattacharyya
of the CPI-M in 1989. She changed her constituency to Calcutta south in
1991 which has since then returned her victorious.

This is her second stint as the Union minister, the first
time being in the Narasimha Rao government when she was given
the ministry of sports and youth affairs under the HRD ministry. But
she quit because she thought her home state needed her services.

It was because of her differences with the Bengal unit of the Congress
that she floated the Trinamool Congress before the
1998 general elections, and made its debut by bagging
seven seats.

A student of humanities, Mamata completed her
masters from Calcutta University after completing her graduation
from Jogomaya College in Calcutta.

Her simple lifestyle and strong contacts with the grassroot
have made her a leader of the masses.